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Good evening, this is John Bachelor.

I'm not in the show, I have a happy conversation with Liz Peak about the probability that the economy will have a soft landing.

That the Federal Reserve meeting next week will raise interest rates for the eleventh time and then ease off on raising rates and costing more money when you buy things.

Because there is indication the jobs market according to the Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen is cooling on its own and that the Federal Reserve watching the jobs market no longer needs to overcorrect.

The full effect of the ten hikes and perhaps the eleventh hike will not show in the economy for some time, perhaps as late as 2025.

So we move on to other promising stories. In Berlin, Judy Dempsey of the Carnegie Endowment writes about her time at the Vilnius Summit for NATO last week and then about her summertime reading and listening was great fun to talk to Judy about novels she's reading political and otherwise.

And what she listens to, the Kortet, the Kronos Kortet in Berlin, wonderful to talk about summertime reading reminds me of being a young person again.

A lengthy conversation, quite happy with Ernesto Arujo Joseph Umar and we were joined by Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal of Columbia.

Maria's not been with us for some time. Her duties as a center require her to be in Columbia traveling a lot, she said.

We discussed the plunging approval rating for Gustavo Petro, the president of Columbia and how it is that after last year's success in his campaign, the public has turned very dubious about his reforms.

His policies have been set aside. He's replaced his cabinet with an extreme left cabinet and he's caught up in a scandal that very much is melodramatic surveillance tape listening in on the conversation of the babysitter of the chief of staff who's now resigned.

A surveillance security chief in charge of making this recording who is now gone dead supposedly by suicide and the allegations of a man who was appointed ambassador to Venezuela, Benedetti, who says that Gustavo Petro's campaign was fueled by donations from outside illegal donations.

Big scandal. It'll go on. Joseph tells me and Maria tells me. We also discussed the question of Ecuador's election, which is coming up soon enough in August, the second round. Why this is important.

The first round perhaps I might have missed out on that. Why this is important is that man by the name of Korea who used to be president of Ecuador is sponsoring an unknown candidate looking to move again into Keto or his influencers into Keto.

And Joseph says, this is not leftism. This is not rightism. This is narco terrorism. Also tonight a lengthy conversation with Gregory Kaplay, editor and publisher of Defense and Foreign Affairs about autocracy and democracy. Gregory observes that both systems where down are exhausted in time and they come to resemble each other.

That is top down command inefficiencies in government and in expenditures. The people grow festive and there's a rejection of the leadership as separated as cut off from what the country needs no longer vigorous.

What is a solution to this? Gregory and I explore what I can easily say is heretical. The solution is a constitutional monarchy in which the man who is the crown does not represent the government. He is the head of state.

The government, the head of government is separate, similar to the situation in the UK. There's Rishi Sunak head of government. There's King Charles III head of state. This gives 100% of the population someone to celebrate and be keen on representing the traditions, the ceremonies, the hopes of the whole nation. Whereas in the model where the head of government and head of state are the same person.

The best you can hope for is half the country supports the head of state and the head of government because of the vote. That is an incumbrance right now in the United States. Later on this evening I speak to Carolyn Rose of New Line's Institute who is writing a geopolitical futures about the Wagner group and what's happened to it and what place it plays in the Kremlin's finances and its reach over these last years.

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